Emily definition

English form of , a gens name from .

(plural Emilys)

Emily has been used as a vernacular form of the Germanic Amelia, up to the nineteenth century.
Used since the Middle Ages; popular in the 19th century and once again today.

1380s-1390s, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale

I am thy mortal foe, and it am I

That so hot loveth Emily the bright,

That I would die here present in her sight.
1830 Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Fourth Series: Cottage Names:

People will please their fancies, and every lady has her favourite names. I myself have several, and they are mostly short and simple. - - - Emily, in which all womanly sweetness seems bound up - perhaps this is the effect of association of ideas - I have known so many charming Emilys
1980 Barbara Pym: A Few Green Leaves ISBN 0060805498 page 8:

This may have accounted for Emma's Christian name, for it had seemed to Beatrix unfair to call her daughter Emily, a name associated with her grandmother's servants rather than the author of The Wuthering Heights, so Emma had been chosen, perhaps with the hope that some of the qualities possessed by the heroine of the novel might be perpetuated.

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